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Another Top 10 Video Game Logics That Don't Make Sense

VO: Dan Paradis
Script Written by Kurt Hvorup
Once more it's time to ask the eternal question, “Why are these things in the games we love?” Join WatchMojo.com as we count down our picks for the Another Top 10 Video Game Logic That Doesn't Make Sense
For this list we're examining more tropes and cliches of gaming that seem to exist without reasonable explanation, contradicting conventional logic and raising eyebrows in some fashion. From simple matters of gravity to more troubling implications related to gender, these recurring trends have certainly gotten our attention – if only because they puzzle and confound us.
Special thanks to our user Norris Vaughn for submitting the idea on our interactive suggestion tool: WatchMojo.comsuggest

Another Top 10 Video Game Logic That Doesn't Make Sense

Once more it's time to ask the eternal question, “Why are these things in the games we love?” Welcome to WatchMojo.com and today we’ll be counting down our picks for another top 10 pieces of Video Game Logic That Don't Make Sense.

For this list we're examining more tropes and cliches of gaming that seem to exist without reasonable explanation, contradicting conventional logic and raising eyebrows in some fashion. From simple matters of gravity to more troubling implications related to gender, these recurring trends have certainly gotten our attention – if only because they puzzle and confound us.

#10: Didn't I Just Kill You?

As far back as gaming's earliest days, the threat of enemies respawning the second you leave a room has been a constant. Sometimes players are merely faced with a finite but overwhelming number of foes attacking in waves, other times it's an unending barrage that ceases only when the player dies. No matter the exact form, it's hard to justify why we're doing battle with unyielding, borderline supernatural adversaries in a great deal of games.

#9: Rich Wildlife

Don't fret about finances – the great outdoors have got you covered. Known as the Money Spider trope, this entails animals and monsters somehow carrying money for players to claim in combat. As far back as the earliest role-playing games, gold and other riches could be looted from the corpses of deadly beasts. Perhaps the thinking is that some of these creatures consumed wealthy humans and thus are accidental inheritors of that wealth, but that's quite a stretch for many reasons.

#8: What's With All The Lit Torches?

Maybe ancient locales have regular visitors... thousands of years after the fall of their creators. Games such as “Tomb Raider”, for all their merit, tend to avoiding answering the question of why long-abandoned tombs are still lit with candles and torches. In certain cases it could be chalked up to implying current inhabitants, but more often than not this is an unexplained circumstance that wouldn't be hard to contextualize. Magically-imbued fire, a secret tribe, a sign of other travellers passing through – so many possibilities to consider, so little time.

#7: The Double Jump

Ah, gravity, thou art a fickle and malleable entity. At least, that's the impression that gaming gives off when it grants characters the power to make an additional jump while airborne. While certainly versatile and engaging, it has the consequence of calling into doubt any game's supposed adherence to the laws of reality. Games featuring mid-air dashing or trajectory-changing abilities, such as “Star Wars: The Force Unleashed”, only exasperate the matter by implicitly relying on magic or vaguely-defined sources of energy. Science can't help you here.

#6: Fix Fire with Fire

When in doubt, apply flames or the smack of a heavy tool. Those tuned into multiplayer-oriented games may have noticed that even when vehicles are set ablaze, they can be restored to normal with the use of a blowtorch or similar device. Then there's cases where players can fix gravely-damaged objects... by hitting them enough with a wrench. What's most bizarre, though, is that some of these tools can double as weapons, with little if any change in animation.

#5: Smoke Inhalation? What's That?

Video games can be fantastical and stretch reality to its limit, there's no question of that. Yet it's always a bit unusual when, in games where characters must flee from burning structures, they're not impeded or negatively affected by smoke inhalation. Dialogue and scripted sequences may make reference to their predicament, throwing in a cough or a gasp, but in regards to gameplay no effort is made to simulate the experience. Here's a golden opportunity to truly grasp at the mantle of realism, and few have tried their hand at it.

#4: Magic Magazines

We'd never have guessed that military forces in gaming had a mastery of such wizardry and wonder. In all seriousness, this wasteful habit of tossing aside partially-used ammo clips while reloading is weird enough before one realizes that players don't lose any bullets through this process. And yet it's accepted as the norm by virtually every first-person shooter, regardless of overall quality or attention to detail. Whether a game aims for psuedo-realism or more stylized action, it's almost guaranteed to feature waste-free gun reloading without raising a single eyebrow.

#3: Time Heals All Wounds

Popularized in the 2000s by series such as “Halo” and “Call of Duty”, regenerating health has become an industry trend that has long since transcended specific franchises and even genres. From a design standpoint it makes a certain amount of sense: developers want their games to be tightly paced, and backtracking for healing items might impede progress. But making game heroes and heroines regain health over time has the effect of threatening suspension of disbelief. How can one buy into a game purporting to be realistic or reality-adjacent when characters magically recover from brutal injury by simply waiting five seconds?

#2: Bikini Armour

Not only is this strange, it's also problematic. More than a few games these days feature character customization and player-chosen armament, with a correlation forming between amount of skin covered and potential defence against attack. However, with regards to female game characters, there's been a trend of skimpier costumes equalling greater resistance to damage or access to other useful attributes. Setting aside that this defies the entire purpose of armour, it also plays into a greater phenomenon of fan service being the primary or only reason for a given character's design. To say it's caused some heated arguments is an understatement.

Before we unveil our top pick, here are a few honorable mentions:

Waterproof Fireballs
Look Mom, No Hands
Freezing Gravity

#1: One Man Army Syndrome

Who ever said chivalry was dead? It's no secret that grand scale games where massive armies clash can be taxing on whatever hardware they inhabit, hence why many titles choose to keep battles close and personal. However, such restrictions can get ridiculous at times – for example, in “Assassin's Creed”, it's fairly common for a crowd of guards to attack the player one at a time. Conventional wisdom suggests that an army can – and should – overwhelm singular foes, yet enemies in gaming choose to instead divide up and wait for their turn to fight. We'll never quite understand this one.

Do you agree with our list? What logic in video games doesn't make much sense to you? For more reflective Top 10s published daily, be sure to subscribe to WatchMojo.com.